Error 443: Insufficient Disk Space
by GingerAndRust
Summary: Time really is terribly inefficient. What with lost timelines, corrupted data, alternate universes and all the bits and pieces that get lost by the wayside, the universe has run out of disk space. The problem is, data consolidation on the cosmic level can be a bit...tricky.


_This first chapter was a voice test that I wrote some time ago. I was practicing writing for the Doctor Who characters, and slapped together a situation in which I could write for multiple characters simultaneously. However, upon revisiting this idea, I have discovered a story that I rather want to tell. Updates for this will be sporadic until I get into the grove of things, but I hope you enjoy this first taste._

* * *

There were many unofficially official rules when traveling aboard the TARDIS, and they ranged from, "Don't wander off," to "Don't tell the Doctor what to do," and, of course, "Remember, the Doctor lies." Amy never took much stock in any of these rules, primarily because, more often than not, it was in the breaking of these rules where real progress was made. That progress took many forms, ranging from a last-minute, impossible escape to the slight slackening of the tightly wound ball of untappable crazy that was the Doctor.

There were, however, other rules. Unspoken rules. Rules built in the long glances that she and Rory shared over the Doctor's shoulder when he was either too manic or too sad to notice. These rules boiled down to simple statements of fact.

One – There have been others before us, and there will be others after us.

Two – The doctor can be as terrible as he is kind.

Three – The doctor is old, and we will never, ever, truly know him.

While Amy actively rebelled against the Doctor's explicitly stated rules, she held the second set close to her heart, hoping for the day when they would prove to be their own contradictions. She tried desperately to learn from them, and if there were days when she and Rory felt like mere filler in the course of the Doctor's massive, impossible life…well, those days were more than made up for by the others when she and her husband were the Ponds That Waited – the Roman and the Girl with the crack in her wall.

She loved the Doctor enough to let everything else slide.

Unfortunately, there were days when not knowing the major events and players from the Doctor's past could be damned annoying, not to mention dangerous and occasionally life threatening. On one such occasion, Amy found herself quietly – well, mostly quietly – cursing the Doctor and his secrets as she pelted down a side street in good old, circa 2011 London, hand in hand with a dark eyed, rather cute man who had smiled sideways at her and called himself the Doctor.

She panted as they neared the end of the dustbin-crowded alley. Years of running both towards and away from danger kept her from all out wheezing after their sustained sprint, but the burn was there, married to the happy surge of adrenaline pumping through her veins. She could feel it building in her chest, and she knew that she and the man would have to stop eventually to catch their breath. It was, unfortunately, not time for that yet.

Priorities, Pond.

As they hit the spill of light that poured in from the mouth of the alley, Amy adjusted her grip on the man, taking his wrist instead of his hand and throwing all of her weight towards pulling him to the left and towards the spitting, electronic hum that burnt the air in the wake of the creature tailing close behind and less than a street over.

"What – what are you doing?" The man said, attempting to pull her back to the right. "Can't you hear hat? Bad sound, that. Never run towards the bad sounds."

Amy yanked on the man's hand and breathed a sigh as he relented, albeit reluctantly, and followed her as she weaved through the throngs of people pushing and shoving their way down the road's sidewalks. "We're already too far north. I don't want those baddies going any farther in that direction, thank you very much," she said, pitching her voice louder than was natural so that it carried over the clamor of the other pedestrians. "North is to the right, so we're going left."

"That fire two streets back wasn't natural, don't you understand," said the man, mouth twisted in frustration. After a pause, his lips thinned further. "_Well_, I suppose that depends on your definition of natural. Really, it's absolutely natural for our lovely little Pyresprites, but not particularly –"

"I _know_," Amy said, eyes flashing as she strengthened her grip on the man's wrist and pulled him down another alley. "I said 'baddies,' remember? What, you think I'm running like this from an electrical fire?"

"I didn't say it wasn't an overreaction of sorts, but you'd be amazed at what humans do impulsively most of the time. They'll stand strong in the face of absolute, inevitable destruction but quiver in horror at the mention of sprouts. Fascinating bunch."

"I wasn't running from the fire, moron," Amy said, sidling around the closed front of a skip and pausing to make sure she could still hear the electronic hum behind her. "I was running so that the thing following us in the telephone wires doesn't chow down on my cells' electricity or whatever and spit me back out as a rubbish fire."

"Actually, it wouldn't, strictly speaking, have spit you back up so much as it –

"-I was being tactful, thanks."

"Right," the man said, eyeing her carefully. "But you know what's chasing us, and that's interesting. What's much more interesting is the fact that it's chasing you at all. Plenty of people on the street at this hour, plenty of power lines and automobiles and flashy kiosks to suck dry, so why chase you?"

Amy laughed softly, the sound dry and cracked around her harsh breathing. "Maybe it likes redheads."

"Can't blame it for that, can we," the man said with a smile that was chipped and cold around the edges, "but that's not interest it's showing. That is hunger. Now, that's not all that surprising. Not too cognizant of their own feelings, Pyresprites. They only have two real settings- hungry and not hungry – so any other emotions, like their pack loyalties or anger or anything that would motivate them towards action rather than inaction manifest themselves as hunger. So. You must have done something really, really nasty for that little thing to pass up all other food sources and follow a small snack like you."

"Or?" Amy said, not sparing the man behind her more than a glance.

"Or?" He parroted back.

"Yeah, _OR_, mister. Is that really the only conclusion you could come up with? I didn't kill its kids or whatever you think, so what other options do you think there could be?"

She could feel the man staring at her for a moment, his gaze flat and assessing before his eyes swept her in the same bottom-to-top motion that the Doctor often used when wielding his screwdriver, a smile slipping onto his face.

"Oh, clever. Oh, I wish I had my sonic – would have picked up on that immediately – but, that is brilliant. Where are you leading it?"

Amy smiled, turning onto a new street and dashing down it. "We've already corralled four others. They're greedy little fellas, fire sprites –"

"Pyresprites. So named because they used to eat –"

" – people's campfires and funeral pyres, yeah, I know. Whatever. Anyways, so long as we wear slightly leaky power cells and run just fast enough to make sure they don't accidentally zap us in the process – "

"They'll follow you wherever you lead. It's instinct – follow the biggest power source, and you're packing…ah, that's from a while out," the man said as she showed him the softly glowing bit of metal she had suspended from a chain around her neck. "Year 27,010, abouts, if I had to estimate. No, there's nothing on Earth that could even come close to that. How did you get it?"

"I'm borrowing it," she said, tucking the chain back beneath her scarf and smiling as she spotted a familiar gate up ahead. She pushed into it, and it swung open easily, revealing a small, overgrown garden that was walled in on three sides by apartment buildings. It was home base at the moment, or at least their home base away from the TARDIS, and she felt a strong sense of ease settle over her even as she shouted, "Oi, there's another one coming. Get ready," at her husband who started up off of a bench as she entered the garden.

"On it," Rory said, picking up the cage-like device they used to hold the already captured Pyresprites and hefting it over his shoulder, watching the power lines as he waited for the opportune moment. "Who's he?" he asked, not taking his eyes off of the lines, but frowning none-the-less.

"The little fire starters set off sparks a few blocks away, and they caught on an oil patch. The pavement went up. This guy pulled me back from the flames, not that I needed it," she added, though she smiled at the rumpled stranger even as she dropped his hand.

The man strode forward towards Rory, brushing his hands together enthusiastically. "I'd offer to shake hands, but you look a tad busy. Hi. I'm the Doctor."

"So he says," Amy said, watching Rory's eyes dart sideways in surprise before refocusing on the power lines.

"Right. He's not, though…obviously he's not," Rory said.

"'Course I am. Why wouldn't I be," the man said, sniffing. "Though that's not really the right question, is it? Two young kids like you – what…early twenties, from Earth but you know what Pyresprites are and how to catch them, _so_ not just from Earth I'd wager. I've said I'm the Doctor, but you don't believe me, which says an awful lot all on its own."

"God, he is the Doctor, isn't he," Rory said, rolling his eyes. "I suppose that's not impossible…actually, it's sorta likely. I wonder why this hasn't happened before, what with him having all of space and time and still ending up in London a couple months after our wedding. Why's his face look like that, though?"

The Doctor looked affronted. "What's wrong with my face?"

"Oh, it's all kinds of wrong," Amy said before stilling. "Here it comes. Can you hear it?"

A buzz crackled through the alley, and Amy pulled out her necklace, waving the fuel cell back and forth. "Come on, ya wretched ghosty thing. Come on. Don't you want a nice, tasty battery to chow down on?"

The Doctor looked like he was about to protest, but before he could say a word, something blue and crackling jumped off of one of the suspended lines, licking the ground with jolting tendrils. Rory tossed a line that looked a bit like a standard wall plug out from the cage on his shoulder, and, without hesitating at all, the Pyresprite caught hold of it, grounding itself in the wire and darting up to the cage itself. As soon as it was contained, Rory flipped a lever, and the whole box began to hum like the creature itself.

"That should keep him busy for a while," Rory said, dropping the cage to the ground and sitting on its top. "Just one more, yeah?"

"Yup, the Doctor should be bringing it this way now," Amy said, turning back to the man who was starting at them bemusedly. "Oh, come on. Even if you are the Doctor, this can't be the first time you've run into people you haven't met yet."

"No, not the first time. Not the first time at all, actually, but this is a bit of a special case," he said, eyes flat until a wry smile took over his face. "So you'll be traveling with me, yeah? And, judging by your reception, I'm assuming that I have a new face now. Shame that. I rather like this one, but, then, nothing lasts forever."

Rory stared blankly at the Doctor for a moment before turning to Amy. "The Doctor can change faces?"

"Uh, yeah? I think so. I mean, he's never really mentioned it, but that must be what happens when he regenerates properly, right? Remember when we first met him?"

"Yeah, he kept going on about how he wasn't finished-"

"-Wasn't done cooking, yeah. Must be a Time Lord thing. I've just never thought about him looking like anything else but…you know. How he is."

"Bow ties and ridiculous hair?"

"Oh bow ties," the Doctor said with a slightly strained smile. "I love bow ties. Good to see that nothing changes."

Amy thought she saw something then, a fleck of something hard in the man's eyes, but it melted away after a moment, leaving the man far more relaxed than he had been at any point since she met him.

"So, I've got two now, do I? Interesting choice, that. It usually works better with one."

Amy suddenly found herself wanting desperately to change the subject.

"How old are you?" She said quickly, and after a moment realized that it was exactly what she wanted to know.

"Bit of a delicate question. I like to think I'm nine hundred and six now, but what with time being what it is…"

Rory let out a sigh of relief. "Well that settles that, then," he said, smiling slightly. "That's a year before we met him."

The Doctor's eyebrows knitted. "Accepting bunch, you lot."

Amy shrugged, grinning. "Well, we'd tell you all about it, but, you know, spoilers."

"Wouldn't want to ruin your fun," Rory said dryly, cracking his neck with a sigh.

When they looked back at the Doctor they almost winced at the gleeful cat-with-the-cream expression that was painted across his face. The man looked positively combustible. "I like you two," he said, rocking forward and back on the balls of his feet.

"Yeah, you better," Amy said, before frowning. "But this means that he always knew, doesn't it?"

Rory met her frown and shrugged. "I guess so. Can't say I'm surprised that he knew he was going to meet us before he met us. That's sort of the life he has."

"Yeah, I guess so," Amy said quietly, but something about the whole situation sat sourly in her stomach. That first meeting with the Doctor was something dear, something truly precious, and she didn't like the fact that he had known her before hand. It made his comments feel false, and she did not like it at all.

Rory was still talking. "Shouldn't you get going, though?" He said, looking at the Doctor. "I could be wrong, but if you meet yourself in the past or the future or…well the point is…I mean, paradoxes, right? Some sort of cosmic implosion? Any of this ring a bell?"

The Doctor shrugged, his wide, dark eyes darting between Amy and her husband. "Nothing to fear there, I'd say. When it comes to past selves and future selves and sideways selves, the thing one really needs to pay attention to is placement. But that's getting ahead of ourselves. I've only just met you, and you've only just met me in a strictly 1 to 1.618 theory of the frames of perception, what with halves and wholes and extra bits, so I'd rather not go into it. You can call me Smith, by the way. Should make things easier."

Amy grit her teeth unconsciously. "I'd really rather not."

"Rather not Smith?" The Doctor said, pulling himself up indignantly. "Why? Why not Smith? Smith's a perfectly good name."

"It's just," Amy said, biting the corner of her bottom lip, "John Smiths seem to die more often than not, and I'd rather not jinx it."

Rory coughed, drawing both of their eyes to him. "So," he said. "So there's _not_ going to be some world ending paradox?"

"'Course not, Mr. Williams," Amy said, walking over to the cage and pushing Rory to the side so that she could sit on the corner. "The Doctor's looped back on his own past before, remember?"

"Yeah, and the world ended."

"Details," she said, laughing in a raucous way. Laughing was all she could do, really, when she faced her memories of the starless empty world where Rory waited and the Doctor had been forgotten. Rory caught her attention from the corner of her eye, and she popped her eyebrows at him in resigned amusement.

"You are right, though – Mister Williams was it? I really should get going," the Doctor said, shuffling closer to the corner of the garden.

Amy frowned over at him. "And why's that?"

The Doctor's gaze darted around the overgrown eaves even as he responded, his eyes never directed towards the couple on the cage. "If I stay here," he said, his chin tilting up, "I'll find myself, and while I'm sure millions of years worth of artists and poets alike would kill for that chance, I'm not rightly sure that's what I should be doing with my life. Me and myself didn't part on the best of terms."

"You aren't on good terms with _yourself_?" Rory asked, skeptical.

"It's complicated."

Amy grinned. "It can't be _that_ complicated." After a pause, she amended her statement, "At least, not complicated for you."


End file.
